MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service) is a service introduced in 3GPP Release 6. MBMS is a technique of transmitting data from a data source to a plurality of user equipments via sharing network resource, which can use the network resource effectively and implement the broadcast and multicast of the multimedia service with relative high speed while providing the multimedia service.
In 3GPP Release 6, before starting to send a new service, a base station sends notification indicators via a MICH channel (MBMS Indicator Channel), to inform a plurality of relevant user terminals that a new service starts currently. After notification indicators is detected by a user terminal in IDLE mode, the user terminal in IDLE mode starts to receive and decode the Multicast Control Channel (MCCH) message to judge whether the current new service is the service subscribed to by itself. If the current new service is the service subscribed to by the user terminal, then the user terminal starts to receive data of the new service on the corresponding time-frequency resource. If the current new service is not the service subscribed to by the user terminal, then the user terminal continues to detect notification indicators in the MICH channel and receive the MCCH message based on the notification indicators, to judge whether the upcoming new service is the service subscribed to by it.
Although MBMS has made complete implementation in 3G systems of Release 7 and Release 6 after long-term research and development, it still can not meet the increasing service demand, especially the strong demand for mobile TV service from users and operators. With starting to make the Release 8, on one hand for further improving MBMS service performance, on the other hand for adapting new SAE/LTE (System Architecture Evolution/Long Term Evolution) system, MBMS performs dramatic improvement in the aspect of logic architecture, service mode, transmission style and channel structure, etc.
Based on this, it is quite necessary to provide a new notification mechanism.